On a recent post on social media about US president Donald Trump one could see 376 Comments. Almost all passionately and harshly bickering with each other over their ever widening partisan divide. 376 Comments?!? That’s a lot of time, attention and energy. All so valuable. Perhaps an assessment of how we are collectively allocating our resources is in order.
A president or prime minister is put simply a reflection of the sentiment of a majority of any given population in a nation state at the time. It is important to remember that. There are others. No one party or platform or group of people has a monopoly on being right. This “rightness” usually exists somewhere in between both extremes. It strikes one as odd how few people seem to realize this when it comes to politics and religion. Especially in the context of everything we have learned and know from a study of our shared human history. It is this forgetting of such a basic truth that has been causing wars amongst human civilizations for thousands of years.
In reality there are both noble and harmful goals being aspired to and enacted by almost every country’s leader in every administration. The people’s’ primary goal should not be to choose sides and defend their candidate’s agenda in its entirety to the death, but rather to step back and monitor the leader’s actions individually as a concerned citizen and protector of their country and its constitution, irrespective of partisan politics. Upon doing so the individual will quickly see that the job of that person is so mammoth and overreaching that the partisan bickering of the populace does nothing but
distract that leader from being able to do their job effectively.
Donald Trump may be one of the most adored and despised presidents in US history, but precisely because of that he is also surely one of the most challenged when it comes to being able to effectively govern. This is never a good thing for a people, lest those people forget that the world is watching and the world is a very competitive place with plenty of bad actors who harbor no good will towards other countries they perceive as competitors.
Instead each individual has an obligation to rise above their emotional partisan leanings and objectively voice their viewpoint to their elected government officials in agreement or dissension of said agenda and actions to help guide and steer the ship of their country’s path forward, That is how a people can most effectively help govern their country of residence.
If for a moment we assume that most people are simply incapable of this high-wire act of both agreeing with some goals of their president and disagreeing with others, due to their impassioned emotions creating an inability to see the bigger picture importance of effectively governing a nation, it still behooves these same people to minimize the effort they put into complaining and bickering amongst themselves and instead focus their attention and energy on actions that help sway the direction of their own governance by said elected officials.
Even simple actions of some substance — a letter a phone call an email a petition starting a non profit or NGO or PAC or a Thoughtstorm group — are better than arguing in the public square. This is the keen understanding that people who lead have had for thousands of years of human history. This is why they are the leaders. There are a multitude of effective substantive actions that every individual in the United States can be taking right now. All vastly more valuable than arguing on social media.
Many in a country’s populace have big juicy noble goals. Though sometimes those goals directly conflict with those of their fellow citizens. This is where democracy and compromise come into play. A mutual respect for civility and democratic ideas that continues long eras of peace and sustainability in a civilization.
Laws can always be overturned or amended. (Think the abolition of slavery in the US.) Disrespect for the law, such as dismissing the validity of the results of an electoral process, or lawlessness most often leads to chaos self-destruction and fascist or communist overthrow. [study the Napoleonic overthrow of France and half of Europe after their alleged people’s revolution on Bastille Day — a still-shocking and vital lesson in the importance of and need for respect civility organization and democratic principles and infrastructure.]